{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Engineering Enablement by DX","title":"Intercom’s approach to a great on-call experience | Brian Scanlan (Intercom)","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4224,"description":"In this deep-dive episode, Brian Scanlan, Principal Systems Engineer at Intercom, describes how the company’s on-call process works. He explains how the process started and key changes they’ve made over the years, including a new volunteer model, changes to compensation, and more.\nDiscussion points:\n(1:28) How on-call started at Intercom\n(10:11) Brian’s background and interest in being on-call\n(14:06) Getting engineers motivated to be on-call \n(16:37) Challenges Intercom saw with on-call as it grew\n(19:53) Having too many people on-call\n(23:20) Having alarms that aren’t useful \n(26:03) Recognizing uneven workload with compensation\n(27:22) Initiating changes to the on-call process \n(30:08) Creating a volunteer model\n(33:02) Addressing concerns that volunteers wouldn’t take action on alarms \n(34:40) Equitability in a volunteer model\n(36:36) Expectations of expertise for being on-call\n(40:56) How volunteers sign up \n(44:15) The Incident Commander role \n(46:19) Using code review for changes to alarms\n(50:02) On-call compensation \n(52:50) Other approaches to compensating on-call\n(55:08) Whether other companies should compensate on-call\n(57:32) How Intercom’s on-call process compares to other companies \n(1:00:46) Recent changes to the on-call process\n(1:04:13) Balancing responsiveness and burnout \n(1:07:12) Signals for evaluating the on-call process \n‍\nMentions and links: \nFollow Brian on LinkedIn or Twitter \nBrian’s article: How we fixed our on call process to avoid engineer burnout\nGergely Orosz’s On-Call Compensation ","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/KGgcOtJYA_n91_n-WTCIj4wPicnSNHbF85xMwXKLznQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9iNjU2/NjdiYzQ1NmMxNTgx/Y2VhZDcyNWQ1M2Uy/YThlOC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}